BT impersonators and more medication misery

Another dull damp day, but I think I slept a bit better. Ten hours in bed, three of them awake and a couple of dreams at the point of waking up to pee. I think they were travel dreams. I was listening to a news item about Chinese hacking activity when a phone call arrived from someone with a Chinese accent purporting to be from BT, alleging our router settings had been changed to allow password free wi-fi access and that malware was downloading on to our network, presumably via a drive-by exploit. The caller wanted me to access the router admin account to remedy this, and was offering help to do so. Given how recently it was that the system was configured by an OpenReach engineer and knowing exactly who has logged into our wi-fi since then, I asked a few questions for clarification. 

Vague answers amplified my suspicion, so I then challenged the caller to identify herself in a way I could verify. She became more pushy. I put the phone down. Within a minute a 'supervisor' called and continued where the woman had left off. I put the phone down on him too. I was half awake when the calls started but fully awake when they ended and somewhat distressed. I called the BT contact number on my mobile, went through the security check and received a return call. A secure connection check confirmed that all was in order. The call was from a scammer trying to hijack the account. I was advised of the way to check independently in future if there had been breach of wi-fi security and that set my mind at rest.

While I was on the phone, I ate my daily banana, drank water and took my first pill of the day and then got dressed. I was under the impression I had a GP appointment at ten. This interruption had wasted the hour I had to eat breakfast and get myself to the surgery. I got there five minutes late, only to discover the appointment is this afternoon. I had misread my digital diary. What an upset, what a mess! 

Clare's study circle was arriving when I got home. I had breakfast in the kitchen on my own then checked if I had taken my first pill of the day. I have a tendency to do things automatically and not remember if I really follow my daily routine. It's difficult if I get disrupted. It wasn't clear if I had followed the routine. Strips of medication currently in use by the pharmacy don't have days of the week helpfully printed on them, I don't get on with those fiddly pill box accessories marked with days of the week,  so I now have to write the days on the medication pack. Writing on foil doesn't always show clearly. After the stroke I used a daily tick sheet as part of the meds routine plus a phone notification. Now I only take two pills a day at different times, it's easier to remember. If I get disrupted, I'm in trouble.

I returned to the surgery in the rain for my appointment at three. The wind blew so fiercely and erratically I couldn't control my brolly and risked damaging it. The GP I saw addressed concerns written in the letter I delivered. Apparently, not taking statins adds to the risk post stroke. The body produces more cholesterol than normal. Being dairy free is said to make no difference. I wasn't offered a cholesterol test that would confirm this, however. I said the statins made me feel poorly and deprived me of a morning's activity. It was suggested I take the med at bed time instead. It remains to be seen how I cope, given the number of times I get up to pee in the night. 

Dr Hughes the cardiologist had written to the surgery recommending replacing the clot dispersal med with aspirin plus another with a long unpronounceable name. This is said to stop blood leakage from minor wounds like my big toe and perineum. I took the prescription to the pharmacy opposite the surgery and was told a delivery was awaited. Tomorrow, hopefully.

The rain worsened on my way home. I collected household waste paper reading for collection tomorrow, but was unable to put it into the relevant blue bag without getting soaked and had to wait for a break in the rain to finish the job. It didn't stop for long. I paced up and down indoors for exercise to keep my blood circulating in an effort to lower my blood pressure. The GP said it was very high. This wasn't a surprise to me, the way I was feeling. The scam call this morning upset me and my reaction to it along with feeling trapped by there being no alternative to a set of meds that rarely leave me feeling well, continued right up to bed time

The eye of the beholder

After rising early, my annoying start to the day with Google Blogger was made more annoying by receiving a text message purporting to be a Pay Pal security alert, saying my account was blocked and needed unblocking with a clickable link to a URL to follow through. The text message header gave a full UK mobile number from which it originated, like the alert, most likely a fake, or else a number used to harvest phone numbers from people wanting to check it out. If spam text messages are sent to randomly generated phone numbers, harvesting responses is a way of finding out which numbers out of the random set generated are actually in use. Information that can be sold to other scammers. Either that or some cyber scammer has my mobile number, siphoned off in a hack attack on a website containing my mobile number - probably TalkTalk - at some time or another, but when? 

Only recently I set up a Pay Pal account, but didn't get as far as adding bank details to it. I've had almost daily nags to do so ever since. Enough to make me ask - do I really need this extra convenient financial facility? Isn't it just going to be one more set of emails I don't need, another area of cyber vulnerability I can well do without? So I closed the new account. I wonder how long it will take the email nags from Pay Pay to dry up?

In the mail today an envelope from the TV licensing authority telling us that we have to re-apply for a TV license: i.e. pay up in full within two months or else. It's only four months ago when I reached 75 that I became eligible for a free license and was refunded eight months worth of subscription money paid out in December last. The new license will expire end of July 2021. Well, I had four months for free, and never minded having to afford the license fee payment, because of the invaluable content and web services the Beeb provides, which we use every day. I greatly resent the government starving the Corporation of funds, and resulting cutbacks in content. It will in my opinion contribute further to the decline of British influence in the world. Just like brexit.

Clare and I cooked and ate lunch together, then I went out to the local shops for a few items, before a walk in the park. Clare went out to a meditation group at six, so we ate supper later than usual when she got back. We watched a fascinating hour long programme in Welsh 'Cefn Gwlad' (Back Country in English) about a very traditional Snowdonia sheep farm showing a shepherd's work around the year in great detail. 

The programme must have been made about twenty five years ago. The screen aspect ratio was 3:2 and the colour cast wasn't nearly as vivid  and saturated as prevalent nowadays. It made me wonder if it had been filmed rather than videoed on VHS. It made a pleasant and restful change from today's over bright, hyper-real HD screen colours. A resurgence of interest in 35mm film cameras and photography suggests a dissatisfaction with the digital given, as it seems un-natural, hard on the eyes. Nature's colours are far more varied and subtle than human attempts to emulate them digitally.

Indoor Sunday

Another rainy day here, with two dozen people for the Sunday Eucharist. Afterwards I spoke with the elder sister of a teenager who's started singing in the choir. They're from Bulgaria. The lad is still in school, but his sister who's been here longer, has run her own restaurant in Montreux, and is now setting up a new business to import niche market food and drink products from back home, aware of the growing interest in traditional hand crafted products in Western Europe. It's good to meet a young entrepreneur in tune with contemporary interests.

After a leisurely lunch and siesta I was ready to go out for a stroll, but rain persisted, so I stayed in did some writing, and listened to a BBC local radio webcast in which the release of Kath and Anto's new Sonrisa album 'From Today' was mentioned and a track from it played for the first time. Clare has been in Kenilworth looking after Rhiannon this weekend and she returned home with the album CD. I greatly look forward to hearing this when I return in ten days time, as the track broadcasted was a beautiful piece of music. craftsmanship. It makes me very proud.

I watched another episode of McMafia, summarised in a quote I read somewhere as 'English toffs and the Russian underworld'. Oh really? Well maybe. I can't quite suspend disbelief, although I can accept how complex is the web of international financial trading within which criminal enterprises hide, and how it's possible to snoop on people, know just where they are in this interconnected world, and do nasty things to them. But surely this applies to crime fighters as well as criminals. Can crooks really do bad things, so often with impunity? Is it true that law enforcement world wide is so under-funded that it's unable to keep track, so their adversaries are always one jump ahead?

There was an interesting 'File on Four' radio programme this afternoon about criminal organisations which issue fake university degree certificates, to people who want to buy professional qualification credentials they think will do them some good in the job market. As if this isn't lucrative enough, perpetrators turn to extortion and blackmail of clients, threatening to expose them to authorities and cost them their jobs and maybe residence permits unless they pay extra. 

It makes use of thousands of websites, and uses VOIP telephone contact with enquirers which can spoof caller i/d, and ensure the real life location of the scammers is very hard for non-experts to trace. It's just like the people who ring up and tell you they're from TalkTalk, troubleshooting your compromised internet router, using real phone numbers gleaned from a hack of the company subscriber database a couple of years back. These new technologies are very capable, but have made crime and deception possible on a mass scale, and internationally, in a way few thought possible at the turn of the 21st century.